1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cell culture apparatus and the fabricating method of the same, especially to a cell culture apparatus and its fabricating method for cell culturing.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventional cell culture apparatus for in vitro cell culture or bioreactors in laboratories has certain limits in culturing cells for medical uses. Those apparatus, cell culture dish, for example, are not ideal for preserving physiological function of primary mammalian cells which may attribute to deficient of proper physiological conditions on dish, 3D microenvironment and mass transfer system, for example. For most apparatus for cell culture in 3D, said conventional bioreactors, are mostly developed for batch mass production of biologics, recombinant proteins, for examples which demand large volume and complicated operating process.
A couple of technologies have been developed to provide 3D environment of cell in vitro. Preconfigured scaffold made from biomaterials and collagen sponge, for example, provide not only mechanical strength but nutrients deposition which facilitate cell growth and metobolites in 3D form in vitro. Those scaffold, or term “frame”, for cell culture, however, mostly fabricated by sol-gel method which has some limitations on practical application of biomedical uses, which could be summarized as follows: (1) Larger pore size of scaffold lead to cell cluster formation. The pore size of the frame made of the sol-gel method is in the range of 50-100 μm. However, the size of a normal cell is in the range of 5-20 μm. In contrast to smaller size of cells, larger pore size of frame will lead to cluster formation of cells inside scaffold. (2) Limitation of physical scale of pore size fabricated by conventional method: the pore size of a cell culture frame produced by conventional methods is limited to 100 μm, and the precise shape of the frame is not easy to be re-produced due to poor mechanical strength of biomaterials. (3) Poor mass transformation of nutrients in scaffold. Scaffold in bulk form could lead to insufficient nutrients exchange from cell culture medium through inner scaffold which may result in cell apoptosis in inner part of scaffold.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide an improved method to mitigate the aforementioned problems.